Meta

Within minutes of each other this morning, two lively commentaries came across my computer screen written by Catholic press veterans.

— Greg Erlandson, president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor, reviews “Being Catholic Now,” the Kerry Kennedy book interviewing prominent American Catholics about their lives of faith. To say Erlandson didn’t like the book would be an understatement.

There is so much wrong about it, so many proud manifestations of ignorance, so much smug self-absorption on the part of Kennedy and the many “prominent Americans” she interviewed that it is a chore to make it through a single chapter, much less the entire book.

— Christopher Gunty, associate publisher of the Florida Catholic, which publishes editions in several Florida dioceses, writes about how last week’s March for Life here in Washington, which he attended, seemed to enter a new era because of the presence in the White House of a new chief resident.

A college student best summed up the mood of the day. On the Metro, Washington’s subway system, a small group of University of Notre Dame students headed back to the parish in Virginia where they spent the nights before and after the March for Life. They seemed energized by the march, but concerned. One young man noted that in past years, when President George W. Bush would call in to the gathering with a message in support of the cause, it was enough for the marchers to focus on simply overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that essentially legalized abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy. This year, however, with a new administration in the White House, the battles will be “more specific” he said.